Customer Reviews
Utter Drivel - By: Mr. N. Bonsor, 04 Apr 2008 
I do not know how Americans view Islam but as an Englishman/European it seems to me that Said's views are so much poppycock.To make a couple of pointsin a limited space.
Of course we have a stereotypical view of Islam just as Islam has a stereotypical view of us - & these views are largely hostile .So what? For century after century Islam was an enormous threat to what might loosely be called Christendom. It shaped every aspect of European history & was directly responsible for Europes colonial empires. Up till around 1750 they were a dangerous direct competitor to our interests.Gibbon writingin the 1780s was the first to think that the danger had passed .On a local scale the threat lasted even longer - Barbary pirates ravaged the coast of England up till the 1830s carting off coastal villages into slavery & at even later dates on the west coast of Ireland & that was at the height of the British Empire ! .By a strange inversion left wing academics & Said have made Europeans & Americans see these things entirely from the point of view of Islam ie as uniquely a problem of western imperialism largely ignoring about a thousand years of history.
Common sense would suggest that as our knowledge of these societies grewin the 19th century so stereotypes would break down.Said says the opposite - they served to reinforce them. Common Sense is right - stereotypes did break down.He makes much of the fact that as a boy he saw these european pictures of the east & they bore no relation to the societies he knew.It never seems to occur to him that as a Palestinian/American he might not be seeing these pictures as a European sees them & a 19th century European at that. 19th century Europeans , for whom these pictures were intended , were preoccupied with the dehumanising & mechanising aspects of industrial society ,their own society, & used other societies to show up these concerns.European attitudes were complex & contradictory but they were not attempting to give an accurate view of oriental society as their viewers well understood. When Gauguin paints a picture of a naked Tahitian girl we dont think he is trying to justify French imperialism nor do we think that he is saying much about Tahiti. Naked Tahitian girls did not buy his paintings. He was saying a great deal however about 19th century France with its rigid stifling conventions compared with the natural grace of a simpler more primitive world. Said is himself guilty of a kind of mental colonialism.He assumes that he understands what these pictures are about & is going to tell us what they mean. But he does not understand them because he does not understand 19th century Europe & he gets it wrong.
Finally Said does not seem to understand that the British did not need to justify their oriental empire by regarding other societies as inferior & their rule as necessary to bring enlightenment to the natives. He assumes that, like the Roman Empire, it was acquired through conscious effort.Nothing could be further from the truth. The British Empirein India was acquired in a haphazard way through chance .They thought that as it had been delivered into their hands by fate they had as much right to be there as their Moghul predecessors. Early British colonialists simply adopted the customs of the dominant Muslim culture which they much admired.- even to the point of practising polygamy.It was only after the Indian mutinyin the late Victorian period when the British were forbidden to intermarry with the natives that they turned into a caste & thought that they had to justify their presencein the country by adopting spurious notions of superiority.
In short western attitudes to the orient mirror by & large oriental attitudes to the west - often confusing & contradictory. Americas particular support for Israel owes much to a particular sense of their own identity & is not shared by European countries. Said's thesis isin my view nonsense..
Said too much..? - By: D. J. Forbes, 01 Feb 2008 
Drawing upon the work of Michel Foucault, Edward Said claims that Western ideas of the `Orient' are not based upon objective facts but are created through academic & cultural `discourses' which serve to promote Western imperialism - often despite `liberal' intentions.
This mythical `East' is the antithesis of the West, a negative or inversion of the Occident, & is used to define bothin binary opposition to each other & to facilitate the political & domination of the East.
Howeverin order to demonstrate the existence of this `Orientalism' Said falls back on an equally stereotypical & monolithic `West' which he constructs entirely from the carefully selected writings of a handful of 19th Century middle-class, white, male English & French authors.
This tactic not only ignores or misrepresents a large body of Western authors sympathetic to the East & sensitive to differences within it, but also glosses over Western heterogenities of class, race, sex, religion & generationin order to manufacture a homogenous `Occident' devoid of differences.
Said is as guilty of *Occidentalism* as those he criticises are of *Orientalism*.
Said fails to provide any evidence that the `West' defines itselfin binary opposition to a mythical `East' that Western scholars have created for just this purpose, he simply *manufactures* the kind of `West' necessary to explain the `East' that he himself has constructed from a very limited number of Western texts about the `Orient'.
He has created his own mythical `East' & `West' from a small number of secondary sources which he then projects onto others & thinks he has *discovered* rather than *invented*.
Well past its sell-by date - By: D. Pavett, 14 Mar 2006 Books, however good or bad they are, can gather a momentum of their own once they become best-sellers. So it is with Orientalism. People will continue to read it because so many have read it. All the same it is time to touch base & say loud & clear that this is a very bad book. It is full of unjustified vitriol against people Said does not like. It is completely unscholarlyin that Said has clearly not read some of the material about which he offers opinions. It is unreliablein that he gets many important facts wrong. It is animated by the idea that anyone who doesn't have the same political opinions as Said cannot possibly have anything useful to say. Finally, & perhaps worst of all, Said showed himself to be impervious to criticism & did not even both to correct clearly established errors. This is a work of great arrogance. The case for all of these points is made by Robert Irwinin For Lust of Knowing (2006). Anyone reading Said's book must also read Irwin if they want to have a balanced view.
An utterly outstanding book that demands reading - By: , 14 Jan 2005 
Few works are more deserving of the 'Modern Classic' label that Penguin has given this book. Perhaps it is only after nearly twenty year since its first publication that we are able to appreciate the prophetic & uniquely influential nature of Said's insights into the roots of the 'West's' antagonism towards the 'Orient'. For what is,in effect, little more than a book of literary criticism, the ramifications for all areas of scholarly research & investigation are remarkable. On a personal level it is a book that has profoundly affected both my political & academic outlook & forced a re-evaluation of my attitudes (and not just towards the Middle-East) and, more significantly, the underlying deceits or conspiracies of history on which they are founded. I urge every personin a position of power to study this canonical work. That it is hard reading does not detract from but adds to the power of the work; at every moment Said's intimidating (but inspiringly humanistic & humane) scholarship isin evidence & one can only marvel at his analytical dexterity. Those who see the book as repetative & hypocritically reductive have failed to grasp the true substance which isin the criticism & not primarilyin the conclusions which are, for the most part, self-evident, as Said himself declares from the outset.
There will, I am sure, continue be numerous wilful misreadings of 'Orientalism' & that it continues to provoke such controversy is a testament to its brilliance. Ignore them & read it.
Thick book, little substance - By: Mr. Daniel Miller, 23 Sep 2004 It is easy to become acquainted with Said's overall perspective. He merely argues,in the manner of Foucault, that what Westerners call the "Orient" is little more than the totality of the discourses the West has producedin order to conceive of it. Inherentin the text, it would seem to me, is an ironic acceptance of the West as the 'norm' by which the Orient is measured. Nevertheless his Preface to the 2003 edition is marvellous & thought-provoking. He shows that he is capable of understanding the limitations of academia when it comes to analysing rigorous topics on the ground. An ostentatiously thick book, however, which contains dissapointingly little by way of ARGUMENT, as opposed to academical detail.
